Medical Discourses and Female Agency in 19th-Century Bolivia and Scotland

This research project investigates how medical and legal discourses in 19th-century Scotland and Bolivia constructed ideas of gender, violence, and agency. Drawing on archival sources—including clinical notes, legal proceedings, and personal diaries—the study explores how medical and legal frameworks interpreted women's sexuality, mental health, and moral behaviour.

The project examines how colonial and republican institutions shaped knowledge about female agency and sexual violence, and how these intersected with broader debates on race, civilisation, and medical authority. It also considers the role of British medical practitioners working in ex-European colonies in shaping local understandings of health, mental illness and moral classification.

This work contributes to medical humanities, gender history, and Latin American studies, and is grounded in feminist and decolonial approaches to archival research.

I welcome collaboration in:

• History of medicine and psychiatry

• Gender and colonial legal systems

• Archival and manuscript studies

• Comparative colonial medical histories

• Feminist and decolonial theory